Author: Roger Bartra
Subject: History/Latin American Studies
Paper ISBN 0-8135-1742-7
Pages: 225 pp. 22 b&w illus.
Description:

Illustrated by Adela Trueta

Translated by Claire Joysmith

"A fascinating book . . . Bartra's argument is concise and elegant in form, one that rearticulates ideas in a persuasive inquiry. His point of view is, certainly, that of an intellectual from the Third World--refreshing and appealing."--Julio Ortega, Brown University

"An uncommonly imaginative set of essays on the mediationsÐÐespecially the imaginary symbols and deflections--that breathe life and legitimacy into contemporary systems of political domination."--Steve J. Stern, University of Wisconsin

In this collection of essays, Roger Bartra, a prominent Mexican scholar, offers his own view of the expansion of the power of the modern state in both capitalist and socialist societies. Not accepting the traditional borderlines that separate art and literature from science and politics, Bartra playfully moves from one topic to what at first appears to be a startlingly different topic, and discovers links between different aspects of modern culture.

In each essay, Bartra argues that there are groups of institutions, social relationships, and ideas that function as imaginary networks to suppress class conflict and to give unity and stability to society. The mediating networks are partly in the institutional solidity of the State and partly in the imagination. The networks allow class conflicts to seem to cancel each other out, but are not real substitutes for class struggles. Bartra uses the metaphor of bridges to make his point. The mediating networks build bridges between the State and social classes. These bridges eventually cancel out the different banks they unite, and actually conceal the chasms, or contraditions and differences, between the banks. The bridges legitimize capitalist domination.

The chapters are illustrated by drawings which, as a metaphorical joke, relate Bartra's argument to the Apocalypse and to the Tarot. In his conclusion, Bartra discovers that his preceding essays about pessimism, disillusionment, and the crisis of legitimacy now have a more fashionable name--postmodernism. This book fits into the new wave of postmodernist studies, in an unusually broad and imaginative manner.

Roger Bartra is an anthropologist and sociologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the editor of La Jornada Semanal, a literary magazine.